


and does not completely unhappen

by BlackEyedGirl



Category: Dollhouse
Genre: Angst, Episode Related, Episode: s01e13 Epitaph One, F/M, Older Woman/Younger Man, POV Female Character, Porn Battle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-25
Updated: 2010-01-25
Packaged: 2017-10-06 16:24:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/55588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackEyedGirl/pseuds/BlackEyedGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It happens once, in the in-between time. After he starts calling her Adelle and before she would ever think to call him sweetheart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and does not completely unhappen

**Author's Note:**

> For Porn Battle for the prompt 'genius'. Written before I have seen S2, set during Epitaph One.

It happens once, in the in-between time. After he starts calling her Adelle and before she would ever think to call him sweetheart. Between the bad and the worst.

He has locked himself away up there - days now - hurrying between the chair and the computers, and muttering to himself. It's just the way he did in the days before all this, but these are not the days before. There are computer screens and candle-light; all power used must be accounted for. Topher jumps at the shadows but he still won't leave. (Later they will have to beg him to go back into that room). This time she means to bring him downstairs, though she forgets the mission soon enough.

She walks in – he still doesn't close the door – and says, "Topher."

"Adelle." She's still not used to that, but the Actives are divided between calling her DeWitt and calling her worse things. Adelle is better.

She says, "How is it?"

He says, "I don't- I don't know. I keep thinking that there's something but then I can't, and I don't- I don't remember, I don't know. I used to know this whole machine inside out, I could have _drawn it_ inside out, and, and, _backwards_. And now… there's a start but I can't-."

Looking back on it, that should have been a sign. Topher had rambled even when she was hiring him, but he didn't lose whole trains of thought. But this was before. She wasn't soft yet. This past-Adelle did not clutch him to her and murmur soft words. Perhaps it would have changed things, perhaps she could have tracked down that missing path for him. But she doesn't. She slaps him once, hard, and somehow she is the one to taste blood. She says, "Snap out of it." Consonants as sharp as she can make them.

He holds his hand to his flaming cheek and says, "Ow? Ow."

She looks at him for a moment and starts to cry. She had meant to laugh.

Topher doesn't know that, of course, and panics. "Oh, oh God. Oh, please don't do that. Please don't- Look, I'll figure it out, I promise. I'll make it better, it's here somewhere, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

"We're both sorry, Topher," she manages. "That's not good enough, is it? We have to be better than that."

"We have to be our best," he mutters. "Just have to be our best." He mouths the words to himself and she thinks about slapping him again to make it stop. The others say it about themselves with a twist to their lips like a joke: a broken doll. She wonders if she has broken him too. Unthinking, like a child would do. When he was there with her when they offered places in the ark and she shook her head and Topher had been shaking his, too fast: _I don't understand_. So she doesn't touch.

Instead she watches him as he steps forward and cups her face in his hands. He pulls his left hand back and watches one of her tears roll down his finger like it's something in a microscope. Something precious and unique.

This is afterwards, and she has discovered to her cost that though she is not a sentimental woman, she is nonetheless more sentimental than the rest. That is why she is buried underground with her Actives that are dolls no longer, and with Dr Saunders and Topher. She can admit it now, as she would not before. She loves, at least, the part of him that has stopped in the middle of kissing her to study her tear. The parts of him which are ridiculous as well as brilliant and as well as wicked. He is so very human, still, in every part.

"Topher," she reminds him. She almost finds the laugh that time.

"Oh, yes, um…"

She pushes him back against the wall, and onto the sofa where he used to play Battleship with some version of Sierra. He is too young, and she is too sad, but no one else will touch them now but each other.

It isn't tender – that will come later and he will not remember the rest. She will. She remembers that his fingers were speckled with little burn marks that grazed against her skin. She will tell him tomorrow to start wearing gloves while he rewires the equipment. The patches of skin she sees are pale, lightly covered with fair hair, but he is so young still and they have so little time. No time to get undressed and lie beneath the blankets. They lie on top, still half-clothed, and she pushes her skirt up her thighs. She is the one to guide him inside – he is warm against her hand when everything else is cold. She is cold.

He calls her name (he will go back to Ms DeWitt later, like she is his teacher or a nanny) and _God, God, oh my God_. Topher had always laughed at the idea of souls. She hadn't, even then.

She leaves bruises and scratches all over him. It has been too long and she has forgotten the rules. It is only Topher and they made up their own set when they started all this - pain is just an electrical impulse, it only counts if you remember it afterwards. She was too good at her job and Topher was far too good at his – his genius and her efficiency, they made this possible. But they did have rules. It was the others, the others who pulled hell down on top of them. They didn't follow the rules. So now she doesn't either. She leaves marks. She remembers.

"God," she cries out. "Oh, God."

Topher's hand is working over her again and again; his teeth break the skin on her collarbone. His other hand is tight in her own, wound up in the blanket and her shirt. He is saying something she doesn't understand and she doesn't know whether it's insight or nonsense. There is a white flash – _reset_ – and a moment, just a moment, where he is saying 'Adelle' and she is saying 'Topher' and he is spilling inside her and she doesn't know anything but that.

Isn't that what she sold? One perfect moment and who cares about the rest?

He pulls out of her and it hurts a little. He says, "It won't be me." He shakes his head, too fast. "It's gonna be one of them. We made them and we made them better than us so if anyone's gonna do it, it'll be-."

"Topher!"

"Sorry, sorry, I'll stop. I'll stop."

"Keep looking."

"I will."

"I hired the best, Topher. Don't disappoint me."

"I won't. I promise. I'll fix this. I can fix this."

There won't be anything left to fix. She doesn't say that.

She straightens her dress on the way out. She leaves the door open. She can hear him again, "I can't- can't remember what I was… Oh, God, please…" Even through the glass his lips are red from her kiss, moving too quickly and lost for the words he is seeking.

She ignores him. Later that will be just one more thing to regret, no different than the rest.


End file.
